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Monday, November 28, 2011

I'm in a wonderful art group where we share our talents with each other in round-robin style. One of the things we're working on is graffiti-style work based on the book Walls. Inside the book are lots of pictures of - you guess it - all kinds of blank walls, just waiting to be defaced.

We could have taken pictures of walls and then just drawn on them - perfectly good idea - but the book wasn't very expensive and we wanted to patronize the author for coming up with such a great concept. Here are two photos of wall art I created. So much fun!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

When I first moved to New York City in 2004, I left
classroom teaching and instead taught children who worked in movies, television, and Broadway. One of these students was Angus T.
Jones, the (then) little boy from the tv show 2 ½ Men. When acting kids are out of school on a
few consecutive days, they’re required to have a set tutor to help them make up
the work they miss. For me, it was
always a lot of fun to discover which show or movie I’d be working.

On this particular December day, Angus was appearing on the
Christmas episode of The Regis and Kelly Show. Everyone in the
cast was wearing pajamas for the show, including Regis and Kelly. Angus had
knit a pretty impressive scarf as a gift for Kelly, which I particularly
remember because I still hadn’t mastered the skill of knitting and was amazed that
this little guy had.

Even more than the scarf, I remember the scene in Angus’
dressing room just before the show began.
Angus’ parents were there with us and he was finishing up some schoolwork,
waiting for his cue to go onstage. We heard a knock on the dressing room door and looked up to see Regis, who
was there to visit Angus and welcome him to the show. A few minutes later, Regis, (dressed in pajamas and a
Perry-Como-like bathrobe) Angus, and Kelly’s kids were all singing Christmas songs
together backstage. No one - except a few inconsequential people like me -
would ever see this scene. Regis wouldn’t get a sound byte for it. It wasn’t done to impress anyone. It was just the real Regis, a genuine
man sharing himself and his love.

This week I watched Regis’ last show and I thought about how
many smiles he’s brought to countless faces over the years – not just the ones
we’ve seen on tv, but especially the ones that never appeared on camera. In a time when we find very few
celebrity “personalities” who look the same from the back as they do from the
front, this man was the genuine article. We’re going to miss him.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

My friend Holli sent me a link to a Pinterest that our friend Brandi had pinned. It was a lovely photograph called Twilight in Central Park by Rod Chase. I was working in my Smash Book journal today, so I sketched my version of the photograph in there. So inspiring.